San Francisco Tops List of Hottest Real Estate Markets

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 12:38PM EST · Published Feb 27, 9:20AM EST

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San Francisco Tops List of Hottest Real Estate Markets — © Thinkstock

San Francisco topped Realtor.com’s “The 20 Hottest U.S. Real Estate Markets in February 2016.” It was one of 12 California cities to make the cut.

The research shows just how broad the California recovery is from the Great Recession housing bubble bursting. The improvement not only runs much of the length of the state, along the Pacific from San Diego to San Francisco. Several are in the inland section of California, between the coast and state’s eastern border. Some of these cities had the highest unemployment rates during the recession. These include Modesto and state capital Sacramento.

The entire list in rank order:

San Francisco, Calif.
San Jose, Calif.
Dallas, Texas
Denver, Colo.
Vallejo, Calif.
San Diego, Calif.
Santa Cruz, Calif.
Santa Rosa, Calif.
Stockton, Calif.
Oxnard, Calif.
Sacramento, Calif.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Boulder, Colo.
Modesto, Calif.
Eureka, Calif.
Portland, Ore.
Nashville, Tenn.
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Palm Bay, Fla.
Tampa, Fla.

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The data also offer a bit of good news for Florida real estate’s broadening recovery. While Tampa is on the Gulf of Mexico, on the state’s western border, Palm Bay is on the Atlantic Ocean.

The overall improvement of the U.S. real estate broadened in February. Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist of Realtor.com, said:

I would use the phrase ‘pent-up-demand’ liberally—we’re seeing it come through in the marketplace. The people who didn’t buy last year were frustrated because they were outbid or couldn’t find a home that met their needs. So they more or less took the holidays off, and are back with way more intensity.

Many experts would add that historically low mortgage rates will push demand even further.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.